Winning SaaS customers requires patience

"Eighty percent of success is showing up." — Woody Allen.

For most companies, buying a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to address a critical business need isn't a decision they take lightly.

Evaluating a solution to support HR, CRM, finance, marketing, or any other important part of the business takes a good amount of deliberation. It could involve a demo or a trial. There might be several people involved in the decision. It could require a series of meetings or presentations. In other words, it takes time.

And time is in short supply. Prospective customers don't have a lot of it.

What's urgent for you isn't necessarily urgent for the customer

While you, a SaaS vendor, thinks your solution is the most important priority, the customer has other items on their to-do list. And the particular problem your solution is addressing just might not be at the top of the list right now.

That doesn't mean they don't have a problem that you can solve. It doesn't mean they don't like your solution or your company. And it doesn't mean they've already bought a solution from some other vendor.

It just means they're not ready to evaluate your solution and make a purchase decision right now.

Two options: Push or Wait

So what's a SaaS vendor to do?

One option is to push. That is, try to move the problem and your solution higher up on the priority list.

Create a greater sense of urgency and convince the prospective customer that every day they delay, they're losing money, losing customers, exposing themselves to risk, or some other bad outcome. (See Practical Advice on SaaS Marketing newsletter: "Turn 'nice to have' into 'need to have.'")

Another option is to wait.

But waiting doesn't mean sitting on your hands and doing nothing. It means staying in front of the prospect, so that when they are ready and able to spend the time to evaluate solutions, you'll be there.

Guidelines for waiting

Waiting isn't easy, especially when your company has sales goals to meet. But there are a few guidelines to doing it effectively.Be consistent: Staying in front of a prospective customer requires a long term commitment. It can easily take a prospect many months before they fully engage on an evaluation of your solution. And you'll probably not know precisely when that moment arrives.

That means you need be in front of them consistently... maybe not once every week, but certainly at least once every month. A "one and done" approach won't work.

Educate your prospect: The most effective way to stay in front of prospects is to provide something useful for them. Publishing an insightful white paper, a blog post, benchmark data, or some other valuable content reinforces your credibility and makes a positive impression.

By the way, keep in mind that just because someone's on your contact list isn't an invitation to harass them. A high "opt-out" rate will tell you've crossed into "spammer" territory.

Keep costs low: All of this effort to stay in front of prospects while you wait patiently isn't free. It's part of the customer acquisition costs that make the SaaS business model so challenging. (See "How to cut customer acquisition costs.")

But there are ways to keep the costs under control. Email newsletters, white papers, and blog posts, for example, are fairly inexpensive to distribute. On the other hand, on-site visits from sales executives are expensive and probably not the most efficient way to stay in touch with prospects who are not yet ready to fully engage.

This stuff does work

I recall work I did with one particular vendor to assess whether this "stay in front of prospects" strategy really works. We looked at the deals we had won and worked backwards to examine the entire life of the relationship with the customer.

In most cases, we found that the process extended over many months and involved at least ten "touches" with marketing material. That is, we got in front of the prospect ten times over the period: sent a white paper, invited them to a webinar, delivered a blog post, etc. All that activity happened before the customer seriously engaged in an evaluation of the solution and began working closely with a sales person.

Believe me, I know patience isn't always easy. But if you're selling important solutions to enterprises, plan for it. It's just the way the process works.